[Hornby Trading Statement Published 22 April]

8 hours ago, Gallows-Bait said:

 
If they take control or responsibility of the stock either on leaving the factory (potentially an ex-works basis) or at some point en route to the UK (possibly a Free on Board or similar basis on loading on the ship) then yes this would need to be included in their stock valuation much earlier than terms based on arrival at the UK port or even delivery to their warehouse.  It will really depend on how their contract works.

 

 For the industry I’m in we don’t take control until the goods arrive at our warehouse, so wouldn’t include them until then, but the approach varies a lot depending on which party is willing to handle the shipping, insurance, import duties etc.  It all adds to the costs the same but often one party will have more experience in handling these things than the other.

One thing which has changed over the years is the time of payment.  in many cases in the apast payment was not made ion Chinese produced model railway items until they had been received at the UK shipping agent's port premises.  But. certain behaviours by various -but particularly one person - in the UK market has meant that final payment is now often raised at factory gate.  Thus although the goods are not taken into stock at that point money is being paid out.  

 

However Hornby's mountain of unsold stuff has, I'm sure, very little to do with that change of payment arrangement and is largely, if not entirely, down to past mismanagement and very poor to non-existent marketing decisions.  For years a retailer friend f mine was loud in his complaint that if Hornby repeted a model in many cases they couldn't even be bothered to offer a different running number.  If you don't make what folk will buy then you aren't going to sell it.

 

Factory payment arrangements also vary with some folk repotedly still being able to get end-loaded payment where various stages of work aren't paid for until tooling starts or - I have heard in one case, -until end production starts.  The time of paying out during development thus varies although hopefully it will all be ciming out of a development budgeting process which takes account of the way payments are invoiced by the factory.

 

But whatever happens, and presumably exacerbated by the Red Sea shipping route debacle, money is now usually having to be paid out a much longer time before it can begin to be recovered as sales revenue.  But budgeting and cash flow management should, I hope, recognise that problem

[Buffer Stops]

1 hour ago, Wickham Green too said:

Not quite the same as http://www.lanarkshiremodels.com/lanarkshiremodelsandsupplieswebsite_218.htm but probably of S.R. origin.

The difference is that the Lanarkshire models version hasn't got the section cut out of the beam to avoid excessively damaging Dellner couplings in the event of a stop block collision

[WCRC - the ongoing battle with ORR.]

2 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Swiss rail regulators will ensure that the train operators are regulated in accordance with Swiss law - and nobody else’s!

 

If they fall out of a coach window then that is a matter for the Swiss courts to judge according to Swiss law as set down by its own elected politicians.

 

 

Not quite as a lot of their railway design and operational requirements exactly reflect UIC requirements - i.e. they are set by an international, rather than a national, body.  

 

Although BR, and its successors have been/are UIC members we have until recent years rigorously avoided paying any attention at all to UIC requirements except in respect of traction units and rolling stock operating internationally.  Somethings - such as advanced notice of Bank Holiday and engineering work train alterations would be a darned sight improved if the UK were to apply UIC requirements.

 

Signed past member of timetable conferences, and certain other meetings relating to train operation, organised in accordance with UIC procedures.

[What was in a station telegraph/telephone room?]

On 23/04/2024 at 10:26, keefer said:

History of the Electric Telegraph Company: 

https://distantwriting.co.uk/electrictelegraphcompany.html

 

British railway Telegraph Code Words:

http://www.railwaycodes.org.uk/features/telegraph.shtm

 

The latter contains some errors.  For example the notes in respect of 'Grove' implying it was originaly an SR code are incorrect it was a national code issued by the REC.  The word was directly derived from the name of the wartime LMS headquarters at The Grove, a country house near Watford and in later years a BR training Centre (various of us on RMweb attended courses there - a long while after the war!!).

[What were the typical loco allocations for the Jellicoe Specials for each company that ran them?]

GWR trains to Warrington via Hereford  and Chester were originally planned (the plan drawn up in 1911) to be worked to Warrington by 28XX.  What happened under the pressures of wartime might well have resulted in other engines working some of the trains.

[Handling goods traffic]

11 hours ago, Sol said:

Thanks to all who have responded.

So I assume intermediate / sorting yards would have their own locos to get trains ready, to be added to trains coming in & then continuing on  & of course to sort out stock being left at that sorting yard & I again assume that sorting yard would have been advise in advance how many items of rolling stock is being left there for them to sort?

Some did, many didn't.  Attaching and detaching, especially up to the 1960s also took place at just about every station and in soem cases remarshalling of freights took place at location with no more than a couple of sidings (e.g. Broom Junction).

 

Quite a few stations had track layouts which allowed the work to be carried out by trains travelling in either direction and through trains would call to attach (and sometimes detach) traffic in the goods yard itself.   Traffic being attached to through trains often had to be segregated  (i.e sorted into correct order) to mi mise the time taken to make the attaching moves.

 

The war saw a huge increase in the number of places where some sort of sorting sidings or marshalling yard - often in rural locations - were created out of almost nothing, or were increased in size, to handle the massive increase in freight traffic.  Many of these changes hunk on through the period of freight traffic decline which steepened after the 1955 ASLEF strike which caused the loss of much Goods Rated traffic to road transport.

 

A lot depends on the period - you've got that, and the volume of traffic being handled but also the type of traffic created, or used, by local industry and other activities such as farming or fisheries.  So you need to consider lots of basic things before you decide on your track layout and what it will be meant to do.

[OO gauge Austerity 2-10-0]

On 23/04/2024 at 10:26, Michael Hodgson said:

It's inevitable that companies will duplicate their choice of new product. given that there is a lead time between their getting their project to the point that they have costings etc and can decide to start production and their announcement of it.

 

And if they they all got together and agreed who would produce what, inflated prices could also be fixed so the monpoloies fuzz would rightly drop on them like a ton of bricks.

Quite agree.  But I reckon it's daft duplicating something when you haven't spent any big money on the project and even your initial research isn't complete but the opposition are obviously (to me at any rate) way ahead.  Far better to dump what little time and money you have spent and go find something else otherwise you're just turning it into a w*lly waving exercise.

[Hornby Trading Statement Published 22 April]

3 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

If retailers won't take something, it's not their fault. 

The blame remains with the guy who ordered production of the goods in the first place.

Harry Truman got it right ...

 

And don't overlook the fact that the 'retailers' being talked about here were almost certainly not the model railway trade but the big multiples and mail order houses where the big Christmas market lies.  One look at the sort of 'toy trains' they were selling and you can instantly see just how far off the market some of the Hornby stuff would have been - massively higher priced for less play value in many cases.

[Hornby 2022 Black 5 new tooling]

17 hours ago, cctransuk said:

 

What I still fail to understand is, if Hornby's design team are as knowledgeable as we have been assured, why ANYONE thought that a fixed Royal Train headcode could possibly be acceptable. It should NOT need the members of this forum to point this out.

 

There was a time when forum members commented on the minutae of detail on new models; now, it seems, companies are putting out poorly researched EPs, relying on potential customers to identify the most basic of errors.

 

CJI.

But was it down to them or someone at the factory producing an Ep who thought it would be a good idea or maybe thought that was how the English do such things?   It did at least show that all the lamp brackets were there!

[Simon Kohler Interview]

1 hour ago, Robin Brasher said:

An interesting interview. I thought it was going off topic about the Beatles so I skipped that bit.

 

It looks like Margate's perception of what trains will sell has changed since Tri-ang introduced TT gauge. TT gauge steam was represented by the Southern and Western regions whereas TT:120 is represented by the LNER and LMS.  

 

I write updates on model railways for the Swanage Railway Magazine and I find it difficult to write anything about TT:120 that would interest the readers who are mainly interested in the Southern Region. It has not stopped me from putting in a brief mention as the Railway has had occasional visits from the Flying Scotsman and A4 Pacific locomotives.

Not so much Margate's perception as SK's perception.  He is a self declared ECML pacific 'fan' so you get a new range that starts based on that because it suits him and - maybe - he also knows/believes it will sell.  Plus 'big engines' are more suitable early subjects for a new smaller scale.

[Hornby Trading Statement Published 22 April]

14 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Welcome to the forum, what an interesting first post.

 

how do you offload £9mn of stock (at Trade price, not rrp) without a fire sale ?

 

 

 

I think the $64,000 questions about the stockpile boil down to two things - firstly what is in it and secondly will it cost more to keep on financing it instead of dumping what can be dumped (back to what's there)?

 

I know, from a very reliable source that something that is in the pile is something which has steady sales over an extended term but was simply ordered., for whatever reason, in a huge quantity.  So in theory it will continue to sell at a fairly steady rate and if it was bought in at bargain price for the bulk buy it will gradually offer an improving return due to inflation if nothing else.  But in value terms I would think it is something that isn't a large contributor to the total value - and all it might need is a push to get more of it out to retailers (at the normal price).

 

From what the previous management said - if it is to be believed? - a large element of the stockpile was goods ordered for the Christmas market but which retailers wouldn't take on price grounds.  Clearly an attempt to shift some of that appears to have happened before the more recent Christmas.  But what else - railway or non-railway - is in that huge pile and could it be shelled out at significant reductions without harming the brands?

 

Judging by past comments and what has gone out to retailers at reduced prices there are also over-ordered and some Year 2 models which simply didn't sell in the first place - mosy likely either because the market was sated or what was being offered simply didn't offer much variety on earlier liveries etc.  Here a more selective attack would probably be needed but some of it could be unlikely to ever sell because if the market was not there for it in the first place would it go for it now?  Hornby might well benefit - as in the past couple of years - from finding 'helpful' retailers who are prepared to acceptstuff at reduced prices on sale or return terms to see if that can get shot of it.  But some stuff will hang around for ever and whatever the reps, sorry Sakes Executives as they now are,  try to do it simply won't shift.   Will it better to sell it unboxed for component stripping by specialists at a giveaway price or put it in landfill and get the continuing financial drain off the books, albeit in one bad hit?

 

The stockpile clearly needs to be carefully examined for what it contains rather than what it is costing and then be tackled in a variety of ways to suit whatever markets might exist

[Accurascale's First Steam Locomotive; GWR Collett 78xx Manor Class!]

18 hours ago, Islesy said:

Is that the same 'English' language that has evolved from (and still includes words bastardised from) Latin, Norse, French, Germanic, Cornish and Gaelic?

 

But never fear @cctransuk, we will modify our communications back to a 'pre-grouping' or Era 2 level, which should sit better with you all 😆

Look mate just because the side my ancestors were on in 1066 happened to win near Hastings (historical fact believe or not) there's not need to get touchy about the French.  And at least their existence helped to keep those cuddly little R1s in some work until the disciples of Mr Collett sent some replacements over thereby giving you a chance in later years to produce yet another variant with too many lamp irons (the wrong way round)   I wonder if you've already thought of that little latter temptation?

[BR 16t Minerals, By Accurascale]

17 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Good name for a pit. 

You'll have to lose the K if it's supposed to be in Wales though!

You appear not to have heard of Penrikyber Navigation Colliery, sunk in 1872 by a Mr Thomas of Cwmbach and a group of associates.  Later owned by Cory brothers and then Powell Duffruyn before passing into state ownership; finally closed in 1985.

 

The pit was at Penrhiwceiber  but presumably he original owners hose the strange anglicisation of the name for commercial reasons (and maybe concerned that potential English customers probably wouldn't be able to pronounce the place name?)

[WCRC - the ongoing battle with ORR.]

2 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

It started with the sixth post on the first page. This is not intended to cast any aspersions on that particular poster, because it was always bound to happen, and quite rightly so, in my opinion.

 

WCRC are obliged to follow certain rules to be able to operate trains, and I think everyone accepts this as a general principle.

 

Many of the rules are of a purely operational nature that the public generally aren't interested in. This applies to most of the rule book.

 

Then there are rules that have a more political aspect to them, and this is often the case with rules applied by statute rather than via the rule book. Central Door Locking is one of these. We don't know what went on behind the scenes, but it is easy to imagine HMRI lobbying the Secretary of State for Transport to enact legislation to prohibit Mk1 coaches and slam doors without central door locking. In 1999, the Secretary of State for Transport, John Prescott, agreed, and introduced the Railway Safety Regulations 1999 to Parliament, which passed it.

 

Statutes are always open to change, and a new administration has the power to revoke or amend those made by a previous government. A political party might include promises to revoke certain legislation in their manifesto, if they think it does not match their ideology or they think they will win votes by it. Individual citizens can lobby their MP to get RSR99 Regulation 5 revoked, if they wish. Perhaps if Boris Johnson - that lover of open platform buses - had still been Prime Minister when the current issue first arose, he might have been persuaded to change the regulation. He might also have leant on ORR to modify their approach to granting exemptions, but the ORR are nominally independent and could have resisted; they would not have been able to resist a change in the law, though.

 

But on the whole, I don't think there is either public enthusiasm or political will for relaxing the current rules. Not everyone is happy with them, that is sure, and over the past months, WCRC have focused on winning public opinion over to their side. I am not sure what they then hoped to do with this public opinion. Put pressure on the ORR, I suppose, since there is no sign that I can see that they are trying to get the regulation overturned or amended, but as I said earlier, ORR are not easy to put pressure on.

 

For myself, I am more interested in knowing exactly how the Mk1s in the set are being managed to comply with the regulations, and I'd love to hear a first hand account of what it is like riding in an unheated, unvented and more-or-less sealed Mk2 in both the cold and damp we've had recently, and in the bright sunshine we've got today. I'd also like to know what WCRC tell passengers about why they have to sit in this carriage, but aren't allowed into that one (if that is, indeed, what they are told).

If we go back well over a century people were regularly killed or injured where roads crossed railways on the level.  So Parliament - in some of the earliest railway legislation made stipulations for such a situation.  Those stipulations inconvenienced some people using the roads but they saved a lot of lives - probaby running into many hundreds or more over time.

 

Now numerous people complain about being delayed at level crossings so if we apply your logic public opinion among those people would suggest that all those safety features where a railway crosses a road on the level should be removed and that all level crossing legislation is 'bad'.

 

CDL has saved lives - there are people walking around today who would be underground in a wooden box if it had not been introduced.  Presumably - by your argument - it too is 'bad' and we should let people kill themselves, and others, through their own stupidity and ignorance  (plenty of that about when it comes to slam doors on railway rolling stock)?  That is what you are in effect arguing for - the rule of the unknowing led by the unseeing.  Surely if something which comes at a pretty low price over its working life saves even the serious injury of just one person then it is worth doing"  And WCRC has millions more than even the most pessimistic figures suggest it would cost them to install that very basic safety feature on its rolling stock.  If others are doing it what is so special about that bunch - apart from its very loud, parsimonious,  rabble rousing, voice?.

 

 

 

[Handling goods traffic]

The answer to your questions depends very much on the era to which you are referring and that is very much the case with your first question.

 

However the answer to the second one was fairly consistent over the years because intermediate yards where trains called to attach/detach would assemble vehicles in the optimum way to suit the order in which they had to be shunted into the train.  This was covered by what were known as 'Marshalling instructions' and they definitely existed by the 1890s, if not earlier, on some Companies.  And they basically lasted until  freight etc trains conveying traffic for a variety if destinations etc and attaching/detaching enroute ceased to run on BR.   There are still some about albeit usually conveying specialist traffic in a trainload to a destination yard where they are broken up into smaller sections for various destinations so not taking on any traffic intermediately during their journey.

[What was in a station telegraph/telephone room?]

Some stations used to boast signs which said 'You may send a telegram (or 'you may telephone') from this station.  Sendinga telegram wiould have required a public counter separate from the working part of a telegraph office where somebody could write down and pay for their message.  But generally this system was overtaken by the GPO's facility to send telegrams via a  Post Office counter.   'You may telephone normally seems t ohave meant that a public call box of some sort was available - the railway 'phone system would not have been made available for members of the pi ub lic to make calls over it.

 

all stations of any sort of size had a Telegraph Office but over the years what it did and how it did it changed.  Originally they were, literally  'telegraph offices' using either single needle or multi needle telegraph instruments to send messages (in the Western we called what others might calla telegram a w'ire' so details of all sorts of things would be wired.  This meant that you wrote your message , using code words to keep the message short, on a form which you took to the telegraph office for the Telegraph Clerk to send.  In later years that would mainly be done using a voice call between telegram offices or using something akin to a simple version of what became a teleprinter which wrote the message on a strip of paper at the receiving end.  Ultimately that system was replaced by teleprinters between the busier and more important offices.

 

In many places the Telegraph Office also became the local railway telephone exchange which could rpute you onto different networks or even make a call; ob ver 'theNational' (i. the GPO) 'phone network.  This finction was largely replaced by automatic exchanges and. from the late 1950s/early '60s ever increasing use of ETD (the BR equivalent of STD).   At Reading in the mid 1960s a new telephone exchange was provided - one of the few parts of the major station rebuilding scheme of that era to be actually completed  - and the new exchange was also the 'telegraph office' although it used teleprinters (or voice by 'phone) to send wires. 

 

And, believe it or not, single needle telegraph instruments remained in use on some parts of BR until the first half of the 1970s while at the same time BR also had some of the best data links in the country and could transmit data quicker than anyone else in Britain.

 

 

 

[Accurascale's First Steam Locomotive; GWR Collett 78xx Manor Class!]

8 minutes ago, Legend said:

I think a lot of people just need to “chill “ Take a “Helicopter view” and “run the flag up the pole and see who salutes”  . Let’s see how it “feeds through to the bottom line” “at the end of the day” 

 

Recently retired and don’t miss the corporate spiel at all . 

It all helps to explain why bullsh*t bingo became so popular!!

[WCRC - the ongoing battle with ORR.]

2 hours ago, Reorte said:

Sorry, by all means disagree but if you can't do it civilly then don't say anything at all. "The nutjob side of the debate" isn't really acceptable, and I don't think the "brigades" and "moral idolence" talk is either. We've all got our lines, beyond which we'll start finding things absurd. They're just in different places. For example, people have died from simply tripping over their shoelaces. Alternatives are available, so why not ban shoelaces? Yet I suspect most people would say that that's absurd, and that arguing against such a ban is not the sign of a nutjob. Is there a fundamental difference between that though and anything else that's been discussed on this thread? The point is that we all have a line somewhere, and when yours is crossed there will still be people who haven't reached it - should they, at that point, accuse you of being on the nutjob side?

 

It all smacks of "the way I want the world to be is the only correct one, thus I can sneer at anyone who thinks differently," and that's never got us anywhere. I hope I've not sneered at anyone I've argued against in this thread (although I confess I sometimes let irritation get the better of me - I apologise if I've done that to anyone, and it's a personal flaw I need to work harder on). The better approach is to go with where society overall decides to draw the line (see earlier post I made about the fact this is a democratic country), live with where that line is, and have polite discussion with those who disagree with it - and that can be either because they think it's gone too far or not far enough. Oh, and ignore the real extremists, whether they seem at first to somewhat agree with you or not.

The only problem with 'society as a whole' is that almost invariably society as a whole is not sufficiently informed about all the relevant facts and how they inter-relate to be able to reach a properly informed and reasoned decision.  Such decisions often just go with either gut reaction or some variant of pre-formed prejudice with only a small part of the whole actually bothering to look into the facts and the various conflicting points.

 

CDL is a good example of this.  Firstly we should ask just how many members of 'society as a whole;' have even travelled on a train in, say, the past 10 years?  We could then take that down to more detailed levels such as how many of those have travelled in a Mk1 coach on either a preserved railway or some sort of mainline excursion and then how many have done both of those things and are therefore able to make some sort of comparisons between them.     We are immediately coming down to some very small numbers compared with 'society as a whole' and I suspect that it is more than likely that far more. will have travelled in a Mk 1, or even older, coach on a preserved railway/preservation site than have travelled in one on a mainline excursion.

 

Thus only a relatively small number of people can come to some sort of qualitative assessment drawing on their own experience.  But even that group will not necessarily have the necessary quantitative data to put into a proper assessment comparing risks.   So informed opinion. and objective professional inputs are needed in order to draw up Regulations etc and implement them.

 

CDL was introduced for one very simple reason - it would remove an unregulated, irrational, decision process from the control of train doors, i.e. it would stop human beings doing something they shouldn't do and opening a door at the wrong time.   In consequence it would reduce the number of deaths which occurred every year due to the lack of something to prevent human beings stupidly hurting or killing themselves and others.  And somebody probably also put the usual method of costing such a step in improving safety against the cost of lives saved.

 

I have picked up the personal possessions of someone who jumped off a loco travelling at less than 40 mph - his body had been removed before I got to site to do that but small parts of it remained.  The 25mph decision speed for provision of CDL wasn't just conjured up by magic but has a lot of logic to it if you relate severity of consequences to speed.  However some people have stepped out of a stationary train on the mainline and have either died or been killed as a result of doing so and CDL has helped reduce/eliminate that potential as well (it's far more likely on mainline railways).  

 

Looking at a recent photo in the Daily Telegraph of people leaning out of slam door droplights on a certain viaduct on the West Highland Extension reminded me of another good reason for CDL on The Jacobite.  If a door happened to be only on the first catch leaning on it, especially with others crowding around to get a look as well, could result in the door coming open and somebody falling out.    Falling out of a train is one thing, falling out when the train is on a viaduct 90 ft high is averry different thing.   That too strikes me as a pretty good reason for having CDL on tourist trains using Mk1 coaches on the WHE. 

[Class 47s on unfitted coal trains - when did they cease]

A 47 was not exactly the ideal loco for working an unfitted freight - no sanders for a start was something which made them less than ideal for a lot of freight working in difficult areas.   Plus they were always  in demand for working fitted freights and passenger etc trains.

[Hornby 2022 Black 5 new tooling]

9 hours ago, MoonM said:

I picked up my j15 in a bargain basement sale. One of Hornby's best locos in my opinion but seemed always to be discounted. Maybe not quite as 'sexy' as some of the larger engines? Or maybe Hornby produced far too many? 

Judging by various thngs, including their Covid  'start a layout' bundles, Hornby were at one time blessed with a small mountain of J15s.  I suspect that was a result of one of their typically ill-managed Year 2 over-ordering fiascos.  Yet another example of their poor marketing am nd lak of understanding of the market.

 

The Black 5 at least has the advantage of being the basis for them to produce many of the variants over the years to come but, as ever, even doing that they need to get teh marketing right and that includes the price point at which they put it into the market.   Here, if they bothered, they could learn a lot from Accurascale, and maybe even from Bachmann as well.  accurascale could no doubt have produced an equally verstaile suite of Black 5 topling which would deliver revenue for years to come but I suspect they would have taken much greater care over the initial launch and thevariants it would include by going for a broader opening market rather than Hornby's slightly hit & miss approach in that respect.  In simplistic terms the initial launch has to include some big hitters in terms of sale numbers and to do that you need to understand the market. And big hitters in sales terms mean lower prices for the end consumer.

[Accurascale's First Steam Locomotive; GWR Collett 78xx Manor Class!]

10 hours ago, Vistisen said:

Hmm google can not help me? I was ready with a semaphore reply, but what is the language here?

Single needle telegraph - it says 'thank you' but I didn't leave any spaces between the letters which might not have helped translation.

[Hornby Trading Statement Published 22 April]

8 minutes ago, spamcan61 said:

Simon Kohler gives his take on the UK market and where it's going in May Railway Modeller, includes the comment:-

 

" Such tactics can make the larger and more mature producers look both short on detail and high on cost. This is certainly a dilemma for them as they can either try and compete where additional detail and features are concerned and sell at a much lower margin, which I doubt they could afford to do, or increase their prices to a level that would not make the model viable. It's a catch-22 situation."

 

where 'the tactics' is referring to the price vs. detail and feature set provided by the new players, and 'them' refers to the old established big players. 

 

Nothing radical but at least it's interesting to see those on the inside (until recently) at least understand what's going on.

But do they and does he?  (And also reference a comment made above re newcomers).

 

Accurascale have sold 18,000+ EE Type3/Class 37 models and no doubt they'll be selling even more when other variants are introduced.  Higher volume spreads developing and tooling costs over more models which reduces the unit and thence the price to the consumer.  When did Hornby last sell even 10,000 of any newly introduced loco with a couple of years of it being delivered to market?  Selling even 5,000 puts far greater costs on each unit produced that selling three times as many.  

 

Bachmann have invested in some expensive re-toolings but are they marketing. let alone selling, the volume that helps reduce the unit cost?  Just compare their Class 37 cost with the one from Accurascale.  True lower overheads make a difference and Hornby has heavy, and recently greatly increased. overheads which have to deliver a return in order to achieve profitability.  

 

But Hornby don't just need to come up with a better mousetrap but also the right sort of mousetrap at the right price.  Locomotion No.1 might wot rk very well for them but will they sell enough of them to keep the price down and thus sell even more?  The right version of Black Five could be quite attractive for me but I would hope to see a more attractive price ticket.   k Make the right thing and get teh marketing right so that you k make more and reduce the unit price.  That is where SK misses the track in that RM comment piece - overheads are one thing but getting the marketing right is a very different thing and far more important.

[WCRC - the ongoing battle with ORR.]

3 minutes ago, thegreenhowards said:

How would my child be hit, if there is a steward by the door and a bolt across it? Yes I know that someone once overpowered a steward, but the risk is minuscule and the cost not so. My child is in far more risk crossing the road.
 

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not a reader of the Torygraph!

I also read the Telegraph (or mainly do the sudoku and read the business pages) but here we are beyond that.  Don't forget that EWCRC had an exemption for The Jav con bite based on the very fact that doors would have a secondary bolt and stewards provided to ensure those bolts were not interfered with.  Good arrangement, made a degree of sense (pending fitting of CDL).

 

So what did WCRC do - they didn't bother to have enough stewards to cover every pair of doors.  And guess what - the Railway Inspectorate caught them out (hardly difficult and no doubt at least one passenger had reported WCRC to the Inspectorate).   Putting it rather more brutally WCRC proved that they could not be trusted to manage their. own safety mitigation.  I would hardly call that 'a mistake' and more a matter of inadequate or incompetent safety management (if not worse).

[WCRC - the ongoing battle with ORR.]

9 hours ago, thegreenhowards said:

This thread seems to have come down firmly on the side of the ORR. To my mind we have a classic David v Goliath situation, with the ORR being an arrogant, overbearing, undemocratic beaureacracy which is completely out of touch with how ordinary people assess risks (for example look at the different attitudes to working on ladders at home and at work). WCRC have clearly made some mistakes but thank goodness that some organisations are prepared to put their neck on the line and stand up against unnecessary expenditure and state sponsored bullying. I for one, don’t want to travel in mark 2s or spend an extra £10 for a useless safety initiative.

 

I apologise if I’ve missed it in the 70 odd pages on here, but how many people have been injured in the 40 years of running steam on the West Highland?

 

Andy

I think the expression 'WCRC have clearly made some mistakes' should enter a competition for the best railway related understatement of the decade (excluding those made by politicians).  Even Christian Wolmar - much to my amazement if I am honest - has understood what the real issue is and has come down firmly in support of the action on the part of the regulating authority.

 

4 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

Although support crews are mentioned in the ORR's guidelines, that's not what the statute says, which only mentions fare paying passengers. I see no reason why a non-CDL-fitted coach could not be used by invited guests having no railway experiences at all. The RMB could be used by hired-in caterers. The doors would need to be unlocked, of course, and labelled not for public use.

 

The statute appears to prohibit entry of fare-paying passengers to such a coach (so it would have to be at-seat service), but I would not like to say for certain.

 

Why conflate statute with the reality of actually ensuring safety on a railway?  For example the statute requirement to have continuous brakes on passenger trains was done away with some years ago so are you saying that if statute applies there is no need for continuous brakes on passenger trains?

 

2 hours ago, 2251 said:

 

While it is certainly the case that the 1999 Regulations would not prohibit that, WCRC is subject to the general duties in Part I of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 -- including the duties to non-employees under sections 3 and 4 (note that a railway carriage would appear to be "premises" as defined by section 53).

 

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/part/I/crossheading/general-duties

 

For my own part, I would not want to sign off the use of non-CDL coaching stock by sub-contracted non-railway staff without a pretty robust risk assessment. 

 

 

The position regarding passengers (whether or not they have paid a fare) is simple - they must travel in a vehicle fitted with CDL and the CDL must be in full working order.  

 

As far as people travelling in support coaches are concerned the situation there was made perfectly clear back in. BR days and has not changed since.  And that policy was fully backed by SLOA who put their name to it as well.  When it was applied in the late 1980s some very well known people in the world of railway preservation involved with locos operating on the main line expressed considerable disgust with 'this new nonsense'.  But it made no difference everyone travelling in a support coach, whoever they were, had to be qualified in the relevant track etc safety Rules - no exceptions.  Based as much as anything on my experience from direct involvement in mainline steam working back then but also my wider railway experience I wouldn't allow anyone to be in a position on a train if they do not have the knowledge of how to deal with any potential consequenc es of being there

 

As it happens I was one of the two people - involved at that time with loco owners who were members of SLOA - who were authorised to examine people in their knowledge of the relevant Rules and what they meant in practical situations.  Both of us were BR staff anyway and as it happened I was already authorised to examine BR staff and issue the necessary documentation as far as on-track etc safety was concerned.  

 

At the end of the day this all comes back to safety - safety of the individual person travelling on a train as well the safety of people standing on a station platform etc.  And thinking of the possible consequences it's also about not exposing anyone to the nasty business of dealing with the remains of those whom proper safety procedures would have protected.  

 

 

[Aisgill Accident 1913]

1 hour ago, Morello Cherry said:

 

Although in this case the fireman wasn't because of the injector issue.

 

The estimate of 2-3 minutes to make your way all the way  around in the dark and stopping to oil twice seems a bit optimistic to me.

 

 

Here is the full quote:

 

 

That reads to me to as left hand side in direction of travel to right hand side round the front.

 

It says 'He kept the regulator and reversing lever in the same position and continued to-run forward"

 

He gets back into the cab and he set to work on the injector and then he watched Fellows putting some coal on the fire, then finally Fellows saw the red tail lights.

 

It reads to me like a driver who was so focused on the little tasks (oiling, getting the injector working and watching his fireman rather than paying attention to the signals).

 

I guess he thought that he'd never been stopped there before so why would he be stopped there this time...

 

 

Looking photos of the later 2P and the Midland Compound there is not much room around the cab - barely enough to put a foot down - but clearly a handrail along the cabside to hold onto and there is no reason for it to be there unless you needed to get out onto the front via the cab.

 

 

 

 

I might be imagining it but I think I saw someone hand sanding from the front on a welsh narrow gauge railway in the very early 1980s on a very wet trip up through some woods. But I am probably misremembering what happened.

I would hardly class things such as 'oiling, getting the injector working, and watching his Fireman' as 'little things'.  The world of steam engine management changed massively in a few decades in the early to mid 20th century as technology and materials developed.  1913, especially for those who had learnt their job in even earlier times was a very different railway from just one generation later let alone the later years of steam traction.

 

Failed lubrication could mean stopping and have to be rescued, dodgy and troublesome injectors could mean just the same, and nursing a fire back into shape to keep steaming also took skill and experience - hence the Driver's interest.  Managing the engine is, and was very much so back then, as important as looking out for signals and it could distract an Engineman from other tasks if there were real problems to deal with simply in order to keep on the move.  Where Caudle really fell short was in his wider actions after getting back to the cab and not paying proper attention to where his train was and any signals which might have been missed.

 

The wider ramifications of the collision are interesting - Rule 217, which would have played a critical role in certainly reducing the impact and, probably averting the collision had been in the course of revision during 1913 and Ais Gill prompted a move to further revise and ensure that in these circumstances the (Rear) Guard should immediately go back to protect a train stopped in the way the first express had stopped..   The GWR of course - not unexpectedly - noted and sought to act on the comments about its audible distant signal system (later known as ATC).  

 

However it is interesting to note that the 1910 Hawes Jcn collision had a far greater impact on the GWR and in 1913 it decided to spend £30.000 on providing additional and more comprehensive track circuiting throughout its main line network.